Iran: Tsunami of Arbitrary Arrests, Enforced Disappearances— Detainees Tortured; Face Secret, Arbitrary Executions; Families Search for Disappeared
Iran: Tsunami of Arbitrary Arrests, Enforced Disappearances— Detainees Tortured; Face Secret, Arbitrary Executions; Families Search for Disappeared
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Iran: Tsunami of Arbitrary Arrests, Enforced Disappearances
Iran’s authorities have waged a brutal campaign to terrorize the population through mass arbitrary detentions, torture, and enforced disappearances in the aftermath countrywide massacres of protesters...
- Iran’s intelligence agencies and security forces have carried out mass, arbitrary, violent arrests and detentions of protesters, including children, since December 28, 2025. Tens of thousands are reported to have been arrested across the country. Waves of arrests have continued following the countrywide massacres of January 8 and 9, 2026.
- Authorities have subjected detainees to torture and other ill-treatment. Those detained are at serious risk of death in custody, grossly unfair trials, and secret, summary, and arbitrary executions. Authorities have systematically refused to provide any information about the fate and whereabouts of detainees, thus forcibly disappearing them.
- UN member states should demand Iranian authorities immediately release all those arbitrarily detained, disclose the fate and whereabouts of people forcibly disappeared, halt any planned executions, and allow independent international bodies and monitors, particularly the UN Fact-Finding Mission on Iran, unhindered access to the country, including to all prisons and detention facilities. Judicial authorities in other countries should act to open criminal investigations, including under the principle of universal jurisdiction. Governments with embassies in Iran should send high level observers to all capital trial proceedings and urgently request to visit all sections of detention facilities.